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Talk:Musical References in Turtledove's Work
I changed the name from "allusions" to "references" because "allusion" by definition is an indirect reference. The musical references are usually to specific musicians or songs. :Good move. When you suggested Classical Greek Allusions not long ago (still a worthwhile idea, by the way) I perused the Shakespearean page and found myself thinking, Most of these are not allusions. Now that you've hit on a better name, shall we retitle the others? Turtle Fan (talk) 00:11, July 12, 2015 (UTC) ::Probably a good idea. References do cover allusions, so we wouldn't have to do anything more than retitle. I will get to the Greek page one of these days. I'm plugging along in OtW-dS, but life really wants to get in my way. And BA drops Tuesday. TR (talk) 00:22, July 12, 2015 (UTC) :::Oh, it does, doesn't it. I'll have to go talk to the librarian about their copy. But I've got a long trip coming up, and borrowing a brand-new book from the library involves a very short window before it's due back, so I'll probably have to wait a few weeks. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:06, July 12, 2015 (UTC) Now that I've typed that, maybe we should call it something more specific like "Musicians referenced in Turtledove's" and apply the Minor Fictional Characters rule. TR (talk) 18:02, July 11, 2015 (UTC) :Eh, I wouldn't. Some wiggle room would be useful for music. Let's suppose, for instance, that next year HT writes a short story about a beautiful but no-nonsense archaeologist who leads an expedition to Israel to poke around in some old ruin from 600 BC. She finds a musical instrument and is dusting it off in her tent when in walks Gary, an old friend and not-so-secret admirer. He sees what she's doing and, having learned by virtue of long experience how important it is to lighten the mood with her right off the bat, announces his presence by saying "Now, I've heard there was a secret chord that David played to please the Lord; but you don't really care about music, do ya?" :Who gets that reference under his or her name? Leonard Cohen? Jeff Buckley? kd lang? John Cale? Rufus Wainwright? Bon Jovi? Glen Hansard? Sarah Boyle? Willie Nelson? Bob Dylan? Bono? Any teenager with a guitar who played an open mic night at some coffee house during the second Bush Administration? :Now that's obviously a ridiculously specific hypothetical, but there are a lot of songs like that. And there are other wrinkles, too: If HT refers to a show tune (as in fact he did in that awful space hamster story), we could have a dozen possible people connected to it. A lot of musicals are written by committee, and then there are the actors who make certain shows famous. And traditional folk songs most often were written by no one in particular and sung by everyone. Whose is the definitive cover of "Happy Birthday"? :Actually, I've just about talked myself into saying we should have this page organized by song title. Of course there are a lot of references to artists independent of any song, like Britney Spears this morning. Maybe multiple sections are called for? Turtle Fan (talk) 00:11, July 12, 2015 (UTC) ::Subsections for "musicians referenced" and "songs referenced" would work, I think. TR (talk) 00:22, July 12, 2015 (UTC) :::Yeah. Maybe "Pieces of music referenced" would be a better section heading still, in case something crops up that can't quite be called a song. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:06, July 12, 2015 (UTC) All right, we've covered references to songs without any particular artist, and artists without any particular song. What should we do when we have both? Turtle Fan (talk) 01:15, July 13, 2015 (UTC) :I would put them under both with a cross-reference via a "See Also". ML4E (talk) 21:05, July 13, 2015 (UTC) ::Hmm, yes, probably. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:45, July 14, 2015 (UTC) Historical References One thing I have been noodling over is a "Historical References". This would be like Literary References except to OTL historical events that hadn't happened in the AH or Fantasy story. For instance in LA Jeremiah Stafford asking Balthasar Sinapis if he could borrow the Atlantean Army if he wasn't using it, an allusion to Lincoln which obviously hadn't happened there. Stafford also thinks what the Assembly would say if he allowed the army to be destroyed when they fell into the trap Frederick Radcliff had set. He came up with "Consul Stafford, give back our army!" However, this is a direct reference to Emperor Augustus and the Battle of Teutoberg Forest which apparently happened in this timeline too so would not be included. Another example would be from The Misplaced Legion where Mavrikios Gavras tripped and fell to his knees as he disembarked off a ship at the start of the Yezd war. He recovered from the ill omen by grabbing two fistfuls of sand and declaring Videssos was in good hands in the same way Julius Caesar did prior to the Battle of Thapsus. Marcus Scaurus would not be aware of this since his legion was transported to Videssos years before it happened. As I say, I have been thinking about this but am unsure just how much legs it would have. ML4E (talk) 21:05, July 13, 2015 (UTC) :It would have legs; I can think of quite a few examples off the top of my head, some large, some small. We would have to define it narrowly, having the same level of specificity as "If you're not using your army . . . ". We wouldn't want vague generalities like "Hitler and Featherston both opened death camps." I mean, that one's obvious, but it's also too big. And then there are vaguer ones (though no good example comes to mind at the moment). I'd suggest limiting it to a very specific single historical event unambiguously transposed to another timeline (or from pre-POD to post-POD, as in the Teutoberg example). Turtle Fan (talk) 01:45, July 14, 2015 (UTC) ::We might also consider transplanting some of our more "tangential" articles to such a page. I'm thinking of actors and sports figures who aid "color" to the works, but are still referenced in passing. For example, I added Primo Carnera based on a quick reference in JS, but it's a pretty insubstantial reference. In BA, Truman remembers how Zangara took a shot at FDR and hit Chicago mayor Antonn Cermak instead. He also remembers the Puerto Rican nationalists who charged the White House and died in a hail of bullets. Those references were really incidental, and I don't see much value in creating pages for Zangara, Cermak, or the PR nationalists, but maybe a catch-all page? A ::Alternatively, we could continue our policy of annotation pages. We've been following that scheme inconsistently (ML4E is updating Supervolcano, but that's it), but that might be an alternative. TR (talk) 22:54, July 19, 2015 (UTC)